


The other half of me thinks you're hot and I agree

by orphan_account



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Daemons, F/M, Ficlet Collection, M/M, Misgendering, MtF!Kíli, Nori and Fili the sass masters, Trans Character, and can't keep anyone's crush secret, other tags to come, that daemon AU, who sasses their people, with sassy daemons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-05
Updated: 2014-06-12
Packaged: 2017-12-31 14:15:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1032653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ori wishes his daemon were smaller<br/>Thorin wishes his daemon were bigger, and that people would join his hopeless quest against a dragon already<br/>Kili doesn't have a crush on their burglar<br/>Nori and Fili think everyone is terribly amusing</p><p>ficlets and irregular update schedule ahead</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Not a Girl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alckalin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alckalin/gifts).



Adanbro found it very amusing of course, because he was nothing but a traitor, and the very worst daemon the world had ever known. It made Ori even more furious, and he’d been pretty angry to begin with.

“I mean, it’s not even like I dress like a girl!” he grunted, falling on his bed. “And I wear boy’s braids too!”

“And you have such a virile face,” Adanbro sneered.

“Shush you! It’s all your fault! If you were normal…”

The huge black bear laughed again, and Ori glared at him.

It wasn’t that there was anything bad about being a girl. Ori knew lots of terrific girls, and he liked them a lot. They were dwarves, for the Maker’s sake, they knew better than to judge someone on the way they dress, let alone something as unimportant as the bits between their legs.

Being a girl was fine.

Only, Ori wasn’t one.

He didn’t dress like a girl, and he didn’t do his hair like a girl, but because he had a stupid face, and a stupid daemon with a deep voice, people still thought he was a girl. He could deal with it most of the time, but this time it had been a huge dwarf with wandering hands who hadn’t quite understood what ‘no’ meant, until Adanbro had caught his dog daemon’s neck between his teeth.

Having a bear daemon was annoying most of the time, but sometimes it helped.

For example to get warm cuddles when one felt down. Adanbro was very good at that, licking at Ori’s face and half sprawling over his dwarf until the poor boy laughed and tried to push him away.

“You stupid dork,” Ori grumbled playfully. “Ew, bear drool on my face, that’s disgusting.”

“Your fault for letting something so stupid get to you,” Adanbro retorted. “You are a strong virile dwarf. On the inside.”

“Wish I were one on the outside too.”

“Well, that’s where I come in, isn’t it?”

Ori grabbed a pillow and threw it at his daemon.

“You are personally responsible for everything that’s wrong in my life, so shush it!”

“Of course, you remember that I’m you. Means you are the source of everything wrong in your life. Very philosophical, that.”

“I said shush it.”

“Telling me to shut it is also philosophical, of course.”

“If I stuff you in the back with a hammer, will that be philosophical too?” Ori snapped.

“Nah. It’ll just mean you’re horny and frustrated and taking it out on me.”

The young dwarf snorted. “Oh, fuck you.”

“See? That’s just what I was saying.”

Ori rolled his eyes, and gave up on arguing.

Stupid daemon was always right anyway.


	2. the Ris have a bear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, before all else: what the flying fuck, how comes a fic with only super small ships and such a short chapter ever got so many views? Does anyone have an explanation? Because I'd like to know, honest
> 
> also: I'm sorry that this fic hasn't updated in forever. Other fics happened, and also I had lost the file with everyone's daemon whiiiiiich made writing a bit complicated, as you can imagine.

“One of the Ris has a bear,” Dwalin said once, and so Thorin liked to think it was all his fault.

It had to be someone’s fault, after all, and Thorin himself would never have had such an idea on his own.

“The Ris are dead.”

“No, they had just gone South, but they’re back now,” Dwalin stated. “Ari and the two kids… I think there’s a third one now, too. A girl, I think.”

Thorin shrugged. It was just like Ari, to have gotten a third child at her age when most families these days couldn’t even get one. The Ris had always been a fertile family.

“Even if that’s true, the Ris have birds, everyone know that.”

“Yeah? And the royal line has dogs,” Dwalin sniggered.

Anthophila buzzed disdainfully at him, while Thorin glared, enjoying the joke just as little.

“Bees have happened in the royal line before,” he pointed out. “Not very often, but there have been a few kings who…”

“Yeah, yeah. Well, just the same way, that one Ri has a bear. A huge one, taller than a normal daemon, they say. I’ve seen it once or twice at the market… it’s pretty big. Could take down an orc’s daemon… and don’t take it the wrong way, but when it comes to fighting, you and your nephews have shit daemons, so you’ve got to think about that too.”

Meles nodded firmly, and Dwalin scratched her black and white head, never looking away from Thorin who looked even angrier now.

“I don’t think there’s a right way to take this!” He grunted. “Fili’s daemon is handy in a fight, and Kili’s…”

“ Kili’s got a  _ puppy _ , and don’t you dare try to tell me otherwise. He’s great for playing fetch with the girl, but that’s about it.”

Thorin grunted, but he heard Anthophila giggle, and he glared at his daemon. It was true that Kili’s daemon was… not quite as impressive as they could have wished for. Vallhunds were much valued dogs by Northern men, he’d heard, but Vasgotas still looked like a furry sausage on legs too shorts, as Fili sometimes described his sister’s daemon.

“You could use that bear,” Dwalin insisted. “Not sure which of Ari’s kids has it, but it might be Dori. Would make sense. You remember Dori.”

“We all remember Dori,” Thorin said with a shiver. “He broke the nose of everyone who’d disrespect his mother, and that was a lot of people. Oh, fine. I will go ask. And if he breaks my nose for asking, I will break yours.”

Dwalin and Meles just laughed.

  
  


“Did you get that bear,” Dwalin asked a few days later. “Or do I have to remind you to go see the Ris?”

“I have the bear and more than the bear,” Thorin groaned. “I have the whole set of Ri children coming, Dori and Nori and that little sister of theirs… Ori, I think.”

“Oh, pretty thing that one,” Meles commented, and Dwalin scratched her behind the ear. “Thought that was a boy though.”

Thorin didn’t answer right away, because it was bad form to chat with someone else’s daemon (even if Dwalin and him were close enough that it wasn’t a problem, he supposed) but also because he hadn’t really paid that much attention to the youngest Ri. All his focus had been on that bear, the biggest daemon he had ever seen for a dwarf. Whether the scrawny child attached to it had been boy or girl had been the least of his worries.

“I think the child was far too pretty to be a boy,” he decided. “It’d be better, though. That kid is far too young and far too… pretty for a quest like this. It’ll be a distraction to the others.”

“Not with Dori around,” Dwalin laughed. “I pity whoever tries to so much as touch Dori’s kin. Come on, don’t be so grim. With these three, you have… how many people?”

“I think that brings us to ten people.”

“Bombur might still come, with his brother and cousin. We’d be thirteen.”

Thorin nodded grimly, and even Dwalin didn’t find any joke to make a joke. Thirteen against a dragon wasn’t even madness, it was worth than that.

“ We are all going to die,” Anthophilia buzzed grimly. “And when it happens, remember that I told you so.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dwalin's daemon Meles is a badger  
> Thorin's Anthophilia is a bee  
> Kili's Vasgotas is a Swedish Vallhund


	3. a small accident

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bilbo isn't too happy to have all these dwarves in his house

Bilbo was holding Pestidae in his arms, the two of them trying to calm each other. Him by petting her back, she by licking his chin and repeating that things would be fine. It was just a little food, she reminded him, and they could go buy more in the morning. His furniture could be cleaned, it would be the occasion to wax it, too. The plumbing had needed some reparations for a while. It had been so long since anyone had come home, it was nice to have a little company, wasn’t it?

“They’re not _company_ ,” Bilbo hissed, glaring at a small dwarf with an enormous bear for a daemon. “They’re an uninvited _nuisance_ destroying our home!”

Pestidae roller her eyes to show that he was overreacting, and observed the dwarves and their daemon. It was almost annoying how little annoyed she was, but then again, Bilbo was often annoyed at her. She sometimes didn’t feel like his daemon at all, with all those Tookish ideas she would get.

“That one seems nice,” She insisted, pointing a paw toward what Bilbo assumed to be a younger dwarf than the rest. “He looks friendly. We could do with friends. And I like his daemon.”

Bilbo glared at the dwarf.

“He has a dog, you hate dogs.”

“He is a she,” a small voice next to them said, making them yelp in surprise.

It was the very small dwarf with a very big bear daemon, holding a plate in his hands and frowning at Bilbo. He did not seem angry as such, but he didn’t appear very happy either.

“Kili is a girl,” he claimed. “Don’t call her a boy, you’ll make her sad. If you need help knowing who’s a boy and who’s a girl, I could help. I know other races have trouble with dwarves.”

Shocked as he was at the idea of a bearded woman, Bilbo found himself at loss for an answer. What was one supposed to say when offered a lesson in dwarven gender? This wasn’t a situation he had ever been prepared to deal with.

“It is very nice of you,” Pestidae replied, throwing all convenances away as usual. “We would be very grateful. Did you want anything?”

The small dwarf, bless him, looked a little embarrassed at being addressed directly by a stranger’s daemon, but he was polite enough not to remark on it.

“I was wondering what I should do with my plate?” he asked.

What happened then would haunt Bilbo’s nightmares for the rest of his life. A blond dwarf with a dog just as blond popped out of nowhere, grabbed the small dwarf’s plate and threw it to someone else. And as if this weren’t horrific enough, they all started singing and Pestidae, curse her, laughed and tried to sing with them, as if this were some sort of a funny matter. In the middle of the song, she started playing and running with one of the dog daemon present, a puppyish thing on short legs, and that was just too much. Bilbo was a good hobbit, a Baggins of Bag End, and he would not let his daemon conduct herself so shamefully in the presence of strangers.

He launched himself forward at the same time as one of the dwarf, each of them trying to get back their respective daemon. Bilbo was fuming and the dwarf was laughing and apologizing, and the daemons didn’t want to be caught but they dropped to their knees and still managed.

Only, there appeared to be a small mistake.

“ _Oh_ ,” Bilbo whimpered, his arms full with a cheerful puppy licking at his face.

Facing him, a black haired dwarf, the one called Kili, was holding Pestidae against her chest. Her entire face was red, and her mouth open in shock, just as Bilbo’s was.

It lasted a few seconds, no more, before a knock on the door brought them back to their senses. Bilbo swiftly pushed the dog away, and snatched his Pestidae from the dwarf’s hands to go greet another unwanted guest. His heart was beating hard, and this accident didn’t help him keep his calm against the rudeness of that Oakenshield dwarf. It was too much in too little time, and afterwards Bilbo was forced to withdraw for a few moments, just enough to calm down a little.

Being in his favourite chair, with some tea and biscuits that he had salvaged from the dwarves, helped a bit. As did having his daemon snuggles against his neck, nuzzling at him.

“She has nice hands,” Pestidae claimed suddenly, and all of Bilbo’s precious calm shattered. “And she smells good.”

“That is the most improper thing I’ve ever heard!” Bilbo hissed. “We shall never speak of it again!”

“And he licked you! Her daemon licked you!”

“Enough!” the hobbit snarled, trying to pretend he couldn’t still feel the small dog’s fur against his fingers… trying to pretend it had not been pleasant when it should have been revolting and wrong to do such an intimate thing with a stranger.

It had happened to him before, as a child, to touch someone’s daemon. These things couldn’t be avoided, and it had always had the proper effect on him, one of nausea and horror. This was what he should have felt.

He should not have been left wanting to touch that dwarf’s daemon again.

“I wonder what is name is,” Pestidae sighed. “I hope we’ll know… I hope we’ll see them again after tonight! Her daemon really is nice, and she has such wonderful hands…”

“Stop it! This never happened. We must never speak of it again. Am I clear?”

Pestidae glared at him, furious as usual that he wouldn’t allow her any fun, but she nodded anyway. The dwarves would leave come morning, and Bilbo would never see any of them again. There was no reason to be having an argument about this, not this time.


	4. Bilbo's daemon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> what even is Pestidae, anyway?

After a week of travel, it was clear to everyone that Thorin didn’t like their hobbit much. To be fair, it had been obvious long before that, but Kili had wanted to give her uncle a little time to warm up to the odd little man. Only, time had only made things worse.  _ And  _ that was without anyone even telling Thorin about that daemon accident. Kili had convinced everyone to stay silent, and they had all kept the secret. Probably because had Thorin known, he would have likely ripped the hobbit’s throat for what he’d done. Even if it’d been an accident, and mostly Kili’s own fault. If she hadn’t tried to grab Vasgotas…

“You’re thinking about it again,” her daemon noted, curled on her lap. Their pony’s motion no longer made Vasgotas sick, but he still didn’t like it, and as a result he was oddly calm these days.

“I’m not thinking about anything,” Kili grumbled. “And don’t be so loud.”

“No one cares,” Vasgotas chuckled. “Fee is with his horrible friend, Thorin and Dwalin are gossiping about the hobbit…”

“Wrong, I think they’re talking about Ori this time.”

Vasgotas looked up, and growled softly.

“Poor boy, must be tiring to have everyone look at him like that,” he grunted. “Pretty face and rare daemon, some people have everything…”

“I’m rather happy to be plain and with a plain daemon,” Kili retorted, scratching her daemon’s ears to show she still loved him. “I’ve heard him tell Bilbo that he often had people thinking him a girl, too. It’s awful that people would do that… He doesn’t look very manly, but he wears the braid and all…”

Vasgotas nodded. They sometimes had the opposite problem of course, with people calling Kili a boy because she didn’t always dress like a girl for practical reasons, and because her braids never stayed long in her wild hair. 

“Speaking of Bilbo, when are we going to talk to him?” Vasgotas asked. “We could easily find an excuse you know. Just have to offer to help him next time Thorin sends him to gather wood…”

“He doesn’t want to talk about it, and neither do I.”

“Well, I do. I liked it when he touched me. His hands are much softer than yours, and his face is so smooth, and…”

Kili grabbed her daemon’s muzzle to silence him, and nervously glance around. No one seemed to mind them, but she could see that Fili and Nori were no longer talking, and that did not sound good. These two were only silent when they were listening to other conversations.

“We can’t talk about that,” she whispered. “Imagine if Thorin heard you! He’d kill Bilbo, and then he’d kill us, and then he’d ask Gandalf to bring back the hobbit to life to kill him again for forcing him to kill us!”

“You’re so silly,” Vasgotas grumbled, but he did drop the subject anyway.

Neither of them really thought that Thorin might kill anyone, but then again, neither of them was willing to take the risk either.

  
  


In the end, Kili did a good enough job of ignoring Bilbo, barely looking at him more than twenty times a day. Vasgotas didn’t do so well, and every night when they stopped he would go play with Pestidae. Kili and Bilbo both tried to stop their daemons, while making extra efforts to not actually talk to each other, in vain. Every night, the whole company would watch a puppy play with a…

“What even is your daemon anyway?” Nori asked one evening. “I think I’ve seen something like that before, but can’t remember the name.”

Kili and a few other immediately turned to look first at the hobbit, then at Vasgotas and Pestidae. The dog was lying on his side and would have looked asleep if not for his wagging tail. That, of course, was due to the tawny furred creature lying on top of him and whispering in his ear. Pestidae was a rather strange animal, with a long body and a tail just as long, dark little feet and a reddish tint to her head and the tip of her tail. She looked like nothing Kili had ever seen, and it was not such a surprise when Bilbo explained that she wasn’t a specie found in this part of the world.

“It took me years to find out what she is,” he sighed as he opened his arms, and Pestidae ran to him. “It was a ranger who told us in the end, because she had travelled far into the East and she’d seen creatures like Pestidae… she said Pesti was something called a mongoose.”

The dwarves nodded, watching the hobbit’s daemon and repeating the strange new word to try and remember it. Kili felt oddly pleased to finally know what Pestidae was.

Then after a few seconds, Nori started laughing, so hard that he fell on his knees and looked like he might choke.

“Mongoose?” he wheezed. “Mongoose?”

“That’s what I said,” Bilbo mumbled. “Why is that funny?”

“ It’s cause I’ve been east too,” Nori tried to explain, laughing so hard he choked on every word. “And I see why the wizard brought you. ‘Cause mongooses… Mongooses, they’re famous for  _ killing dangerous snakes _ . And I’m thinking.  _ Smaug _ .”

Fili was the first to join his hilarity, soon followed by Dwalin, Ori, Bofur, Bombur and Gloin who all laughed loudly. Dori, Balin and Oin (once he was told again louder) only smiled politely, trying hard to not be as uncivilised as the others. Thorin did not seem amused at all, nor were Bifur and Gandalf, the wizard immediately trying to explain that this had never been his intention at all.

Kili was less sure how to react. The _was_ something funny to the idea of setting Pestidae against a dragon, but there was also something terrifying that made her want to take the daemon and her hobbit in her arms to protect them both from everything. She wanted to protect him right that instant, because he seemed so  _ hurt  _ by everyone’s laughters. But she couldn’t exactly say that, of course.

“Say, master Gandalf, what about your daemon?” she asked instead, and silence fell right away. “Do you even have one?”

“Of course I have one,” the wizard exclaimed. “But she is not always by my side, and she watches over a few things for me. You may well meet her before this adventure is over.”

“And what creature is she then?” Dori wondered. “Some great beast, certainly?”

They all nodded in agreement, and started chatting about what sort of a daemon a wizard could have. Gandalf appeared rather embarrassed by this attention. All he would say was that his daemon had beautiful wings, and that people were always surprised by her, but none of the dwarves guesses ever seemed to be right. Kili did not really care about it though. She was far more interested in the way Bilbo and Pestidae started relaxing again now no one looked at them.

And when the hobbit smiled at her thankfully, the young princess’s stomach twisted in a painfully pleasant way.

 

 


End file.
